


Etin-truth

by Keenir



Category: Norse Mythology, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Coda, Gen, Hymir's warning is from the Lay Of Hymir, Jötunn Sif, Pre-Movie(s), Spoilers, Thor 2 coda, Thor II coda, Tyr's mother, king of infinite space but for bad dreams - indeed, somewhere there is a Casket Of Ancient Winters laughing itself silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 04:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I am Loki of Jotunheim," Loki said.  "Why  are you laughing?"<br/>"Because you are not of Jotunheim.  <i>I</i> am," Sif said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Etin-truth

**Author's Note:**

> 'His grandam loathly there greeted Tyr:  
> 'Swart heads she had a hundred times nine;  
> 'but another dame, all dight in gold,  
> 'and brow-white,'  
> \--The Lay of Hymir; from The Prose Edda.

He had been weighing this for some time now, now as it was about to be a full week since Malekith's defeat. Weighing what to say - but not to whom, for that at least was an answer he already knew. Weighing both in disguise as Odin Allfather upon the throne of Asgard, and within his private chambers undisguised as himself, Loki.

He appeared in her chambers and waited for her to return from the sparring yards, waiting while seated in one of the comfy padded chairs Sif had long ago brought with her from her grandfather Hymir's estate.

When Sif returned, she let her door close behind her. "Alive?" she asked.

"Very much so," Loki said. He knew he did not look like Odin now, he looked as himself, _or at least as the me whom she and I have known for so long._

"Very well," Sif said, sitting down across from him. "What news do you bring?"

 _Am I_ that _unpredictable that there is no point in even appearing startled, much less surprised?_ "There is a fact I wish to inform you of. Only of late have I been comfortable enough to admit it even to one about to die. Now I feel I can say it to you, healthy and long-lived."

Sif looked at him, and waited patiently.

"I am Loki of Jotunheim," Loki said. "Why are you begun laughing?"

"Because you are not of Jotunheim. _I_ am." And her laughing stilled to silence as it hit her what she said: the truth she had not spoken to non-family in more than centuries.

"The Casket of Ancient Winters was not the only thing which welcomed me and recognized what I am," Loki said. "So too did the Jotun on Jotunheim, grabbing my arm, and then we both saw - he and I - my skin turn blue and ridged."

Sif said, "The Casket of Ancient Winters was built to defend itself - it strikes in more than one direction, so said Hymir, whose grandfather had a hand in its construction. If you touched it, it could reach into your recent past as easily as it could reach into you."

Loki frowned. _That incident with my arm on Jotunheim...was the result of my touching the Casket later on? Interesting._

* * *

Sif is three hundred years old when it happens. Old enough to have passed childhood and adolescence, and on the edge of the long plateau that is physical maturity. Other races of the Nine Realms, they may attain physical and reproductive maturity at the same time; not Asgardians. Like most others of her race, Sif was in no rush to reach her thousandth birthday and the ensuing reproductive maturity...even if some of her friends were itching to get there.

She half-rolls half-tumbles out of bed and scrambles for her washroom, the lights illuminating themselves as she nears, the water beginning to flow in readiness.

"It was a dream, it was a dream," she tells herself over and over again, "it was a dream." But that doesn't stop her from rinsing her face repeatedly, splashing water on her cheeks, and rubbing wet hands against all the skin of her face and scalp and neck.

By the time she can still her hands long enough to look at her reflection - _be me! be me! be me!_ \- her face is more pink than milky hued.

Sif looks away from her reflection, fearing that it would change as it had done in her dream, and she looks down at her hands gripping the smoothed stone surrounding the sink. Both hands are shaking, or at least the skin and veins atop them are shivering and twitching, pulsing hard. Sif claps her hands over her face, elbows now resting on the stone, palms on her lips and cheeks, fingers shielding her eyes.

She doesn't trust herself to cry, can't let herself weep - not and risk the fall of ice, again as in her dream.

The dam has begun to crack.

**~~**

The screaming came before even wakefulness did, though she jerked awake with all the speed of a horse falling through the ice crust of a lake. That was part of why Sif didn't fully recognize it as coming from her own throat.

Hoarfrost prickled up from the blankets like a mossy weed.

Plates and curls of ice gird and armor Sif's nightclothes as if to ready her for battle. Knowing the smell and sight of blood and bone, Sif doesn't fear battle - but ice is another matter. "Grandmother?" she asks in a tinier voice than she has used for over a century, as her grandmother slips into her bedroom and sits at Sif's side.

Sif looks anywhere but at her blonde grandmother, embarased at what has somehow transpired. But then she looked up at grandmother, briefly, Sif's eyes shining bright and full of wet tears, and her throat working to hold down the crying.

"I see we need to talk, Granddaughter," she said to Sif. But for now, she drew Sif into a comforting embrace, letting the girl finish shaking and shuddering. _And if she emits more cold, I can handle that._

**~~**

"How did I come to be here?" Sif asked her father and grandparents in the hearthroom as the fire there was barely embers. "If I am your daughter, and your grandchild, but I am blood kin to none in Asgard or Vanaheim..." and Sif's face scrunched up. "There are settlements of etins and thurses in the Realms of the Dwarves and the Light Elves, are there not?"

"There are," said Tyr her father. "But they are not your kin either."

"Jotunheim had lost the war, and was about to lose all ability to travel to the Realms beside itself," Hymir said. "To repay a great debt, a friend of my father left their infant in a temple which was known to stand in the path of the oncoming Asgardian army. Odin picked up that child, thinking it to have been abandoned, and considered raising the infant as his own. You were very nearly Princess Sif, in line to take the throne of Asgard."

"But then Odin handed you to me," Tyr said, _for I had been his second in command._ "In return, I handed him the son I had fathered - the decision rightly should have been your mother's, but she had died delivering the infant who has grown up to be Prince Loki. A delivery brought on by our victory in battle outside the temple."

**~~**

"It is a modest thing, what Odin cloaked you in," Hymir says to Sif as they sit on a cliff which overlooks much of his estate. "It relies as much upon your will to maintain it, as it relies upon Odin's magic."

"My will?" Sif asked. "I don't want to be a Jotun!"

"As an etin, I take no umbrage at that statement, Grandchild. But other etin may, your Grandmother included." Hymir settled his voice away from Polite Warning, to say "All your life, you have believed yourself to be Asgardian, and that held the magicks up."

"So, you say that, so long as I want to be Asgardian, I will look Asgardian?" Sif asked.

"That is so."

Sif frowned. "Somehow I expected better magic from the Allfather."

Hymir laughed. "Yes, most do. Expectation can be a weapon in itself," _but you have already closed your eyes. We shall see if you heard my advice there._

Clenching her fists, Sif concentrated, focusing on how she wanted to look now and henceforth. Her toes broadened, from the narrow near-bony things they had always been. Her hair darkened until it could proceed no further. Sif opened her eyes and smiled. "Like this."

**~~**

"I will not marry, Loki. Not you, or Thor," Sif said. "I shall not marry any man."

Not missing a beat, Loki asked "Would you marry my berserker sibling Meili, then? Or your fellow shieldmaiden Sigyn?"

"I will not marry," Sif repeated herself.

"I will not vow to support you and spoil you, as I know you would kill me were I to dare try. I would have your back, Sif, in all things."

"Do you not already?" she teased him. "Is that not what we do with each battle we enter into?"

"It is," Loki confirmed, "though you know well that I spoke not simply of that instance of it."

"Then allow me to rephrase my declaration - not simply I will not marry, Loki, but I can not."

"Sif, I would -" and he nearly touched his hand to her fingers.

No," Sif said, jerking her hand back. "You would think to wed yourself to me, and I would not refuse it but for a reason best of all."

"You don't love me," Loki said.

"Have you not heard my grandfather's declaration? In our childhoods he vowed that what he would do is to -

"To death were done the doomed bullocks.

"Then on the spit they speared the three

Ate Sif's husband, ere to sleep he went,

twain of the oxen all by himself."

Sif looked at Loki and asked him "Is that not sufficient reason to keep you from calling me wife?"

_No, not really._

* * *

"And now I am king of Asgard," Loki said, _again_. "Would grand old Hymir eat his lord?"

"Politely," Sif said.

"Nonetheless, I hope you do not refuse my offer this time, Sif. Lady Sif. Warrior Sif. Earllieutenant Sif," addressing her by her rank. "Will you?"

Her eyebrows had raised signifigantly. "As soon as you find out that you are not, in deed or fact, a Jotun, you ask me for my hand?" Sif asked him.

"No. I had resolved to inform you that I am Loki of Jotunheim, and then offer marriage - you changed only part of that with your revelation."

"True. But you are not concerned, now that you know that this prospective bride is Jotun?"

 _When last I sat upon the throne, that may or may not have been an issue - I cannot say, in truth._ "Not after all I have been through, certainly," Loki said. "More importantly, not with how I feel for you, Sif."

Sif considered that, then gave her answer.

**Author's Note:**

> (there’s no real analogy to a 300-year-old Asgardian…humans don’t stop growing til age 30, if I recall)


End file.
